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Google News Initiative

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Re: Google News Initiative

#131

Post by pyoung »

Slansitartop wrote: post #125
zoul wrote: post #27

As someone who runs a regional newspaper, I very much doubt that the future of healthy journalism is in the hands of a big company such as Google. We are already thinking hard what to do with the Facebook monopoly, we would be crazy to voluntarily stick our neck into another one.

> I very much doubt that the future of healthy journalism is in the hands of a big company such as Google. Especially one that's shown a willingness to try to silence narratives that are against its corporate interests: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-america-fires-antitrust-r... : > Barry Lynn, formerly the director of the antitrust-focused Open Markets program at New America, charged Wednesday that Google pressu…

Think tanks are basically lobbyist/pr firms in disguise. While I am not necessarily disagreeing with your main point, I don't think this particular incident is all that controversial. When companies hire lobbyists, they expect them to represent their interests. Same goes for think tanks.

Re: Google News Initiative

#133

Post by open-source-ux »

awakeasleep wrote: post #61
zoul wrote: post #27

As someone who runs a regional newspaper, I very much doubt that the future of healthy journalism is in the hands of a big company such as Google. We are already thinking hard what to do with the Facebook monopoly, we would be crazy to voluntarily stick our neck into another one.

First, I'm the type of person that thinks the concentration of power from monopolies could be the most pressing issue facing the USA-- But can you explain how having another choice is dangerous? It seems like it'd be a gasp of air in the face of facebook's suffocating presence.

But can you explain how having another choice is dangerous?

Don't forget that Google also tracks online behaviour on an industrial scale. It doesn't matter if that information is only collated in aggregated form or "anonymised" (a meaningless term), we don't know how that information could be mined with AI or machine learning either now or in the future.

In fact, I suspect that even Google hasn't figure all the possible uses of the enormous quantity of user behaviour it has captured and continues to capture. And that ubiquitous data capture starts right from school, where millions of students use a cloud-based OS called ChromeOS that records everything they do.

The tech community's response to Google's online tracking and data capture is not scrutiny or questioning, but silence (or a rush to defend them).

Re: Google News Initiative

#134

Post by kyrra »

kuschku wrote: post #120
danso wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subscription system sounds like it's one part of this initiative. And if it is indeed the "main thing" then I think we should give Google some credit for being serious with this initiative. A payments system is a boring problem but it is the one most core to news organizations' current existential problems. It's not as sexy as using NLP to categorize news archives perhaps, but it's the most important to news orgs…

A payment system that’s only useful with a credit card is useless in many countries, though. And Google has managed to fuck up every payment solution they’ve built yet.

(I work on Google Payments, opinions are my own)

Google probably accepts the most forms of payment of any single company in the world (just a guess), but which forms of payment are accepted on any given product under Google will vary. For example, Adwords[0] has the list of supported forms of payment by country. While in Play we things like Paypal, direct_carrier_billing, and gift cards.

I have no clue what the News Initiative is supporting, but I could guess it will be credit/debit cards from around the world.

Google has built a LOT of payments projects. Some have definitely failed, but there are many that you don't notice because it will be supporting specific flows in specific countries or products.

[0] https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375433?hl=en

Re: Google News Initiative

#135

Post by svat »

kingnight wrote: post #42

Sadly, Google is also sitting on a HUGE amount of archival newspaper in a completely unsearchable state. They've OCR'd thousands of historical papers but the search is completely broken. https://news.google.com/newspapers It's a pretty incredible resource if you know the date/place of an event but if you wanted to research a little more broad it's a tool with incredibly untapped potential. I wish they would spend mor…

There used to exist Google News Archive Search, and it really worked. I was able to search for the name of an obscure person who died in 1910, find obituaries of them and create a Wikipedia article about them, etc.

Then in 2011 it was shut down, and also the number of newspapers hasn't grown, it has actually become smaller.[1][2] It's claimed to be back in some form, but those who used to use it earlier aren't really satisfied.[3]

[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/googl... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Google_News_Archi... [3]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/news/Fw2caKy6...

Re: Google News Initiative

#136

Post by fortythirteen »

freehunter wrote: post #126
fortythirteen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What have I said that's solidly right? I've only stated that other organizations show bias. The irony is that you're applying your own biases to someone whom you've never met while denying bias. I don't agree with most of what comes out of right-wingers' mouths. I'm a center-leftist that's tired of having half of the viewpoints "filtered". When Politifact labels something Trump said as "Pants on Fire", then buries th…

I'm not here to judge how you self-identify politically. I'm here to debate the idea that Facebook and Politifact and Snopes (for some reason? Does anyone actually take them seriously?) and everyone else is biased against the often-maligned center-right, but there's some conspiracy where no one can talk about it unless they're far-right which of course no self respecting liberal would believe. And even Spotify is pus…

> everyone else is biased against the often-maligned center-right, but there's some conspiracy where no one can talk about it unless they're far-right

Perhaps the issue is that people talking about it, regardless of their actual beliefs, are labeled "far-right". Hell, even Stephen Pinker has been called "alt-right" at this point.

> At some point people who read the NYT or WSJ and say it's far too liberal may have to accept that their definition of "center" is skewed.

Or perhaps the Overton window on what is considered "progressive" has moved left. For example, ten years ago, senators Clinton and Obama voted for a border fence.

> the very-much centrist mainstream media is too biased toward liberal news

Did you read the Podesta emails? It was example after example of mainstream journalists going out of their way to curry favor with the Clinton campaign. Once again, I think the Overton window of "mainstream progressive" views has shifted. For example, where are the Blue Dog Democrats anymore?

I would invite you to question your own biases.

Re: Google News Initiative

#137

Post by azinman2 »

AJRF wrote: post #46
jacksmith21006 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could not disagree more. I am generally pretty liberal but get news stories from Breitbart, Fox news, etc all the time in my feed. I like to read all sides so love this aspect of Google news. Heck I get negative Google stories from Google. Can't ask for more neutral.

Wow you really, REALLY like Google based on your comment history

Interesting observation. Kind of crazy and not normal. I wonder if the account is a PR implant, or just a really really enthusiastic Google employee.

Re: Google News Initiative

#138

Post by soundwave106 »

kolpa wrote: post #79
kingnight wrote: post #42

Sadly, Google is also sitting on a HUGE amount of archival newspaper in a completely unsearchable state. They've OCR'd thousands of historical papers but the search is completely broken. https://news.google.com/newspapers It's a pretty incredible resource if you know the date/place of an event but if you wanted to research a little more broad it's a tool with incredibly untapped potential. I wish they would spend mor…

What specifically is broken? Basic keyword search seems to work.

The original edition of the Google News Archive included a timeline that helped you narrow down the date range. See this help page from 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20080905060327/http://news.google...

I find the omission in the current engine somewhat frustrating. If you are looking for original references, this timeline was very helpful -- a lot of times, the current search pulls up more modern references that aren't necessarily as useful if you want perspectives from the past. There are ways to search the current archive by date, but they are not terribly intuitive (https://www.thoughtco.com/search-tips-for-google-news-archiv...).

(My memory is that the previous search engine gave better results as well, but unfortunately it's difficult for me to prove whether that's correct one way or another.)

Re: Google News Initiative

#139

Post by nickysielicki »

danso wrote: post #39
nickysielicki wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read between the lines. > During breaking news or crisis situations, stemming the tide of misinformation can be challenging. Speculation can outrun facts as legitimate news outlets on the ground are still investigating. At the same time, bad actors are publishing content on forums and social media with the intent to mislead and capture people’s attention as they rush to find trusted information online. This is just y…

> There is no such thing as fake news, there is only inaccurate news. I'd be the first to agree that "fake news" is a term thrown around too loosely, and that fake news is one of the hardest problems for algorithms to attempt to solve, because it's just as hard for humans. For instance, pushing the story that Bill Cosby has been accused of rape would've been considered by many journalists to be "fake news", either be…

> You don't think there's a distinction between "inaccurate news" and outright intentional fakery?

No, I don't. When you call news fake, all you're doing is calling into question the motive of the author or outlet in addition to calling it inaccurate; You're saying, "This news is inaccurate, and the author intentionally made it so." The first part is a statement about the article itself, the second part is a useless ad hominem attack. So when something is said to be "fake news", it's only indirectly about the news itself.

I'll happily concede that some organizations are objectively kept at higher standards than others, ie: that El Chapo story is clearly just fabricated for advertisement dollars. I am not arguing that it is wrong to ever judge an author or organization for past inaccuracies-- denying news organization reputation would be absurd. But given that what we're really talking about with "fake news" is the reputation and intentions of the organizations, what I resent about the "fake news" label is that it presents this false dichotomy where there are organizations that intend to mislead, and then there are the pure and good ones. There's this implication that a story can only misrepresent something by serious omission or the insertion of something that is totally false and separate from reality, but it's not like that, it's a continuum. All journalists and organizations have some inherent bias, and I don't see why it's reasonable to expect readers to understand the inherent biases of particular outlets and to draw the truth out from mixing and considering them in proportion, whereas if they're exposed to one "fake" website that presents one overtly inaccurate statement, it's assumed to be completely fatal to their reasoning -- overtly false information is simply too powerful for the feeble minds of the masses. And nevermind that what's "fake" is rather subjective, and tends to be ascribed more commonly to the new disruptive media rather than the old and entrenched media conglomerates.

There's far more danger in centralized curation than there is with people being exposed to inaccurate statements on the internet. I do not understand how anyone could think otherwise.

In your eyes, what's the difference between fake and inaccurate news? What makes some inaccurate news fake, and other inaccurate news not-fake? If it's based on gauging the intent of the author, wouldn't you agree that it's practically useless?

Re: Google News Initiative

#140

Post by kuschku »

kyrra wrote: post #134
kuschku wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A payment system that’s only useful with a credit card is useless in many countries, though. And Google has managed to fuck up every payment solution they’ve built yet.

(I work on Google Payments, opinions are my own) Google probably accepts the most forms of payment of any single company in the world (just a guess), but which forms of payment are accepted on any given product under Google will vary. For example, Adwords[0] has the list of supported forms of payment by country. While in Play we things like Paypal, direct_carrier_billing, and gift cards. I have no clue what the News…

And not a single one of them supports SEPA payments.

I had to get a CC just for the Google Play Developer fee.

CCs are very uncommon in Germany, everything – including Amazon.de – supports SEPA payments.

But Google does not.

So, the "Google probably accepts the most forms of payment of any single company in the world (just a guess)" statement may be technically true, but it doesn’t help at all.

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